Imagine continuously working for hours under the hot sun, only to come home to an insufficient salary. These are a few of the unethical conditions involved in the manufacturing of products. A new idea of ethical consumerism suggests purchasing products that were produced in more ideal conditions. Although many see ethical consumerism as an unrealistic ideology, many steps have been taken to achieve it. For instance, different ethical companies have logos on their products, such as the Fair Trade. Often, companies employ workers outside of their country, often for low-cost reasons and places where employment conditions are less thorough. This is a process known as outsourcing. Many well established companies can employ workers in countries such as third world countries. In some cases, worker’s rights aren’t very highly recognized and cause individuals to work in poor conditions. Besides workers, environmental conditions can be poor too, in which environment policies aren’t as harsh and waste material can be disposed of improperly without consequences. This leads to issues such as oil spills, which damage the environment and disrupt the habitats of many organisms, including humans. These conditions occur in various places with numerous cases, making it difficult to dispose of these issues. Although many see ethical consumerism as an unrealistic ideology, many steps have been taken to achieve it, in order to lower the practice of unethical circumstances and help prevent them for the future, such as:
Purchasing local products as opposed to multinational corporations
Buying ethically recognized products (usually have labels)
Raising awareness for the issue of ethical consumerism
There are many benefits of ethical consumerism including:
Environmentally friendly products (products and packaging)
Products considerate of animals (components of product)
Politically right manufacturing (respecting ethical laws)
Sustainability of resources (sustainable resources to produce and sell product)
But what is ethical consumerism, really?
Ethical consumerism is when consumers purchase products that were manufactured in an ethical manner. The following video by PeerSpring gives a more detailed explanation of ethical consumerism.
Ethical Consumerism Statistics:
The goal of ethically purchasing products seems very unlikely, but statistics show the high amount of Canadian population that purchase morally right products. The graphs listed below from Abacus Data discuss the possibility of ethical consumerism becoming a reality, in which awareness on the issue and its practice is quite high, resulting in the likelihood of its solutions.
Figure 1.1 shows a chart comparing people who identify themselves as ethical shoppers, where majority (58%) classify and most of those are women.
Figure 1.2 illustrates the four different types of ethical consumers, their statistics, education, political statistics, age, primary news source, and regional distribution.
Figure 1.3 contains the description of the different ethical consumers and a bar graph comparing them.
Ethical Consumerism and its Benefits
Imagine continuously working for hours under the hot sun, only to come home to an insufficient salary. These are a few of the unethical conditions involved in the manufacturing of products. A new idea of ethical consumerism suggests purchasing products that were produced in more ideal conditions. Although many see ethical consumerism as an unrealistic ideology, many steps have been taken to achieve it. For instance, different ethical companies have logos on their products, such as the Fair Trade. Often, companies employ workers outside of their country, often for low-cost reasons and places where employment conditions are less thorough. This is a process known as outsourcing. Many well established companies can employ workers in countries such as third world countries. In some cases, worker’s rights aren’t very highly recognized and cause individuals to work in poor conditions. Besides workers, environmental conditions can be poor too, in which environment policies aren’t as harsh and waste material can be disposed of improperly without consequences. This leads to issues such as oil spills, which damage the environment and disrupt the habitats of many organisms, including humans. These conditions occur in various places with numerous cases, making it difficult to dispose of these issues. Although many see ethical consumerism as an unrealistic ideology, many steps have been taken to achieve it, in order to lower the practice of unethical circumstances and help prevent them for the future, such as:
Purchasing local products as opposed to multinational corporations
Buying ethically recognized products (usually have labels)
Raising awareness for the issue of ethical consumerism
There are many benefits of ethical consumerism including:
But what is ethical consumerism, really?
Ethical consumerism is when consumers purchase products that were manufactured in an ethical manner. The following video by PeerSpring gives a more detailed explanation of ethical consumerism.
Ethical Consumerism Statistics:
The goal of ethically purchasing products seems very unlikely, but statistics show the high amount of Canadian population that purchase morally right products. The graphs listed below from Abacus Data discuss the possibility of ethical consumerism becoming a reality, in which awareness on the issue and its practice is quite high, resulting in the likelihood of its solutions.Figure 1.1 shows a chart comparing people who identify themselves as ethical shoppers, where majority (58%) classify and most of those are women.
Figure 1.2 illustrates the four different types of ethical consumers, their statistics, education, political statistics, age, primary news source, and regional distribution.
Figure 1.3 contains the description of the different ethical consumers and a bar graph comparing them.
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